Here are answers to some common questions we receive at The Hernried Center.

Because most commercial diet centers only focus on the diet. They give you some combination of products – special foods, supplements, lectures and so on. Few, if any, actually offer a program that identifies and changes the behaviors that contribute to your being overweight in the first place.

Our program will help you overcome the many physical and psychological factors that have made and kept you overweight. While you’re losing weight, you’ll receive professional help and be held accountable for your actions. Clinical studies have shown that accountability and behavioral counseling are effective tools in weight loss and they are the cornerstones of The Hernried Center in Sacramento’s program.

Most commercial diets like to focus on one or two success stories but rarely will they back it up with statistics. We at The Hernried Center are happy to show you our statistics because we are proud of them.

There are a lot of questions you should ask before you entrust your health to a weight loss center. How long has the program been in the area? What is its client retention? What are the success statistics of that particular center? What is its weight management philosophy and why is it better than everyone else’s approach? Are there physicians on-site? Are they available for on-call services? Are they trained and experienced in the metabolic response to weight loss? How will they monitor your health? How experienced is the staff? How long have they worked in that particular program? How are they trained?

The diet step lasts as long as it takes you to lose your weight. See our program results page for detailed information. The maintenance step is at least eighteen months after you complete weight loss. We have found that this amount of time is necessary to create the long-term behavioral changes needed to keep weight off for good.

Medications are a useful tool in the treatment of obesity for some people. But our program reliably helps people lose nearly double the amount of weight that pills do. Also, we feel strongly that relying on a medication for weight loss does not substitute for learning effective behaviors. This is particularly true of people who have a substantial amount of weight to lose or are chronically overweight. Learning to maintain a lower-weight body with skills in nutrition, exercise and self-management cannot be replaced by any medication. However, we do use medication under special circumstances during weight maintenance. Some food situations are especially hard to handle, and medications can help you get through them without experiencing significant regain.

Two principles we strongly believe at The Hernried Center are: it takes time to learn, and you must be tolerant of the mistakes you make along the way. Our maintenance step is based on over 33 years of experience. Although you’re learning while losing weight, the experience comes in the maintenance step. We want our patients to stay connected as they adjust to life in a new, lower-weight body. Common challenges are compliance with nutrition and calorie guidelines, maintaining exercise, practicing new behaviors around eating, and interacting with people and situations in a new and different way. These behaviors must be practiced simultaneously, which can cause stress, panic or feelings of failure. Maintenance clients require consistent, frequent contact with the behavioral staff. It takes time to replace emotional responses to old behaviors and focus on facts.

A minimum twelve months of weight management also ensures that the client will experience familiar eating situations — such as vacations, holidays and life stress — with support, accountability and planning, rather than resorting to old behaviors that result in weight gain. We know that weight regain is a possibility for any dieter. Facing this while under the care of the The Hernried Center staff can turn a small weight gain into a learning situation to avoid future regain.

Just like our medically supervised diet, bariatric surgery is not a cure for obesity. It is an effective tool for the severely obese, however, surgery does not create long-term behavioral change. After an initial honeymoon period, the hunger and emotional longing for food returns. Without acquiring effective lifestyle skills, there can be significant regain. In addition, there are significant medical risks associated with surgery, such as nutritional deficiencies and surgical complications like intestinal obstructions, bleeding, and even death.

For those who have decided to have surgery, The Hernried Center offers the support necessary to increase their chance for long-term success. Our medically supervised diet allows you to achieve the pre-surgical weight loss that is often mandatory. In addition, our education and behavioral health program provide the skills necessary to make gastric bypass work for you over the long haul.

It’s not unusual for us to see people who have regained weight after gastric bypass. Our program is appropriate for them as well. We can help them lose weight in a nutritionally safe manner and help them change behaviors to allow for long-term weight loss.

If a doctor has diagnosed you as obese (see our BMI calculator), or if your weight is affecting your health, the combination of medically supervised weight loss and long-term behavioral health education offered by The Hernried Center is a proven way to keep a thinner, healthier body for the rest of your life. Please feel free to request more information by phone (800-815-4881) or through our simple contact form.

At The Hernried Center, we are not ashamed to say that we have repeat clients. While it’s very possible to lose weight and maintain a 100% loss — and some clients do — many people possess significant levels of resistance to the new skills and behaviors that will make weight maintenance possible. Their level of commitment is not yet sufficient to learn and maintain these behaviors. This can lead to frustration and feelings of failure, often followed by loss of contact with the program and regain. At The Hernried Center, we want our participants to understand that, whether they had to interrupt weight loss before reaching their goal or have experienced regain, they are always welcome to return to The Hernried Center. A returning patient, for whatever reason, is not a loser but a player. By staying in the game they can continue to work toward their ultimate objective. And we applaud them.

You need to be 18 years old to start treatment at The Hernried Center.

For more information about The Hernried Center for Medical Weight Loss, call 800-815-4881. You can also request a free phone consultation by using our easy online form.

*Disclaimer: Individual weight loss results may vary. Diligently following your program will increase your chance of success. All Hernried Center programs are run by licensed medical professionals, but this website does not constitute medical advice.